After the failure of quack cures for his "falling sickness," Albert, an epileptic boy in Victorian England, must rely on his own resources and talents to cope with his disability and make a life for himself. By the author of The Bus People.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From Booklist:

Gr. 6^-9. Anderson, who wrote about disabled children with such candor in The Bus People (1992), manages a somewhat fuller portrait of a disabled child in this disturbing yet compelling story. The writings of Victorian landscape painter and writer Edward Lear inspired the creation of Anderson's keen-witted narrator-protagonist Edward Albert, a boy who, like Lear, lived with "falling sickness," as epilepsy was once called. There's not much in the way of action in the story, but the period flavor is extraordinary. Descriptions of England's backstreets, of Edward's feelings about himself and his periodic plunges into unconsciousness, of Lear (who enters as a character toward the end) and Edward's mother, and of English customs and prejudices give readers an exquisite sense of Victorian times and the struggles of a child on the verge of manhood who has no one to rely on but himself. That Edward Albert, in the end, refuses to conform to the role his society has cast for him lifts this book out of the darkness. Stephanie Zvirin